'It Lives In The Static'

INSECTOID! Four Eyes Studios presents...

‘It lives in the Static’

Erik Lark didn’t speak.

Non-verbal from the age of three, after a grand mal seizure, the pale, skinny eight year old boy’s world had shrunk, and with that implosion, dropped down to a black pin point. This was right before the psychiatrist had diagnosed Erik with being a mute, OCD and overall with autism spectrum disorder.

.

‘Erik, I’ve got someone I’d like you to meet’, Erik’s mother, Jane Lark, said to the slight boy that was engrossed in his red bucket of rainbow clothing pegs. He sat in the modest, beige looking living room. If dull was a decor choice, this was it’s Apex.

Erik looked over to the young, smiling twenty year old man who was wearing black horned-rimmed glasses and a dark blue T-shirt, stonewashed jeans and white New Balance sneakers.  Erik had the faintest of smiles as he stared at the new guy.

 ‘Hello Erik.  My name is Wesley.  I’ll be looking after you tonight while your mother goes out with Dad on the town.  Mum will be back in the morning but we’re going to have heaps of fun.’

‘You sure will have fun E-Mouse. This should be a night to remember for everyone’, Jane reiterated Wesley’s entertainment proclamation. Wesley smiled at Jane’s pet name for her son.  

 Erik coldly blinked, blank faced, then walked cooly back to the living room. No obvious reaction to the information that Wesley had told him.  The mute, sandy- haired child started again playing with the rainbow mix of clothes pegs in the red bucket.

 ‘He’s just shy with new workers. He’s had so many recently’, Jane explained to Wesley.

 ‘That’s perfectly okay Jane. It takes some time to get a good working relationship of right support worker for your son. I hope I’m one of the good one’s for you Erik’, Wesley’s eyes went from the boy facing away from his Mum and this stranger, and then back to looking at Jane Lark. 

‘Where are my manners? Sorry do you prefer to be called “Mrs Lark” or “Jane”?’

 ‘No problem, Wesley. “Jane” is great. Thank you for asking,’ Jane carried herself with poise and grace, straight backed.

Wesley, on the other hand,  had a tendency to slouch and slump his back due to being tall and not the most assertive guy in the world.

 ‘Now Erik doesn’t take any medication. It’s all positive support based regarding his behaviour management’, Jane explained.

‘No medication required. Got it’,  Wesley confirmed.

‘Please just get his dinner sorted at Six. Cut up his food really well as he can choke easily and you also just need to remind him to eat slowly and have a drink’, Jane went through the list of required support for Erik.

 ‘Does Erik enjoy films or music?’ Wesley queried Jane.

She paused for a moment, gently pinching her porcelain chin in contemplation and Wesley could see Jane was inside her head, retrieving something, somewhere misplaced in a shadowed corner of her skull.

 Jane rested a hand on her right hip, the hourglass curve of her waist showing well and Wesley caught himself admiring how attractive Jane actually was for a mature woman.

 Where she had rested her hand had accentuated her voluptuous figure, hidden under a plain, dark brown and unflattering dress. Now it was a revelation as the material had pushed her dress inwards.

Jane said after this pause, ‘Ah yes. Erik does like some movies but sometimes they get him a bit over excited which can affect his sleeping pattern.  Even though we have them on Blu-ray in the film library, please don’t play movies like Star Wars or Jurassic Park as Erik will be hyper afterwards.’

‘So what type of films do you recommend, Jane?’

While he asked this, Wesley kept getting the music of ‘The Graduate’ playing in his head. It distracted him but it made him chuckle.

‘Erik is obsessed with a very particular movie.  It's an old Eighties video horror film called:’

 

 ‘It lives in the Static’.

 

‘ We keep it in our master bedroom, out if the way and hidden on the top of our clothing cupboard.’

 ‘So is it okay if I let him watch it tonight?’

 ‘Yes of course.  Erik watches it with all his new support workers. It is one of the few films we let him watch because it settles Erik for the night. A miracle really that that video came into our lives. A little ritual that he has. It makes for a pleasant first shift for his new workers too. We’ve never had any problems.’

 Jane went on, more animated now talking about Erik’s favourite video. ‘Erik he only watches around twenty minutes of it and then falls asleep, like clockwork, after that time marker.’

 Wesley held his gaze on Jane’s sparkling, chocolate brown eyes as she talked to him. Again that song sprung into his mind: Simon and Garfunkel’s, ‘Mrs. Robinson’

 ‘Don't look at her delicious tits you horny bastard!’ he berated himself in his head.

Jane continued on, ‘It’s weird because Paul, Erik’s father, and I have never sat down and watched this silly, creepy video fully through.  We just know the first twenty minutes he watches is so bloody boring.’

 ‘So what do these twenty minutes entail then?’ Wesley asked Jane.

He had again snapped back into work mode, sex fantasies could wait for later and besides, ‘She’s married dude!’, and Wesley realised he needed to get a girlfriend soon or at least get laid.

  A double-threat to fidelity, Jane was medium height, curvy with pale, creamy skin and was adorned with wavy, dark brunette hair.

Wesley caught visual flashes, in his mind’s eye, of dominating her doggystyle, pulling at her long hair while he took her from behind, squeezing both of her well-rounded arse cheeks firmly and slapping her pale booty hard enough to leave a red hand mark.

A one night stand would do it as four months without is too long. But nothing was worth going back to Rebecca, his psychotic ex-girlfriend. He’d rather be castrated than settle for that shit again.

Wesley had been working heaps to save up for a holiday in France so perhaps he could be forgiven by the gods of fuck.

 Jane answered: ‘Maybe it improves and the rest of the film is better but the first twenty minutes is just a plain looking guy named Bruce travelling to  start his first day on the job at a radio station in the City.  Just long introductory, setup shots of suburban nothing, no dialogue. Just Bruce waking up, having breakfast, packing his lunch, brushing his teeth, insanely dull.’

 ‘The music is creepy. It's just industrial noise.’

 ‘Ah sounds like an arty farty film’, Wesley quipped.

 ‘Oops, sorry I’ve got to go Wesley’,  Jane said, realising time had got away from them.

‘ I’m meeting Paul in thirty minutes at the Indian restaurant. Paul’s coming from work and then we’re staying at the Marriott. I’m so glad that I selected you, Wesley.’

 ‘You’ll be a good worker for Erik. I’ll be back in the morning at 8:00 AM. The spare bed is just down the hall so get comfortable once Erik’s gone to sleep.’

‘Great. Thank you.’

 ‘You brought your own bedding didn’t you Wesley?’

He confirmed Jane’s query.

 Jane lent in closer to Wesley, her floral perfume rose to his nostrils, and she rested her gentle, well manicured hand, fingernails painted with dark nail polish, on his forearm briefly, a platonic goodbye gesture but, ‘fuck me, her hand feels so soft’, Wesley thought.

Jane opened up her heavy, front door and was gone. Her perfume still lingered like an angel seed drifting on the breeze.

.

Make a wise wish Wesley.

.

Wesley greeted Erik again, while Erik was still playing with the clothes pegs in the bucket.  Jane had left for a well earned night out with her husband Paul and some R&R. It was a tough job being a parent of a child with disability.  

It drains the soul if you're not careful.

 Wesley pondered, ‘How is that any different to the blessing and curse of parenting overall anyway?’

Erik sat at the small, wooden dining table in the lemon coloured kitchen, the skinny boy hungrily ate the ham and cheese wholemeal sandwich that Wesley had cut up into one centimetre squares.

 Wesley verbally prompted Erik to eat slower, as Jane had reminded him to, and the pale child listened and obeyed.

Erik showered and dressed himself, and then he brought out a shiny, laminated square over to Wesley. It had a picture of a black rectangle, a wide screen TV Wesley figured, flanked by blood red theatre curtains.

 ‘Very cool communication pic, Erik. I know exactly the movie you want to watch.’

 Wesley left Erik in the living room and walked over to where the main bedroom was. He went into Paul and  Jane’s bedroom and the bespectacled young man retrieved the tape from the secret spot, hidden up high.

 Wesley looked at the faded videotape box cover art under the plastic protective cover that wrapped around the bone-coloured plastic box.  It was a cool retro kind of illustration, hand-painted without any digital manipulation in sight... of course. It was all perfect.  The 1980s style with the clichéd oozing red title over black, sinister art.  There was a central hand coming out from the middle old CRT- Television. The demonic, sharp clawed hand and muscular arm consisted of black and white miniature squares and rectangles, like the fuzzy static that you see on a TV without a video signal. It reached out from the static television. Faint, dark grey figures surrounded this and you only saw them after gazing for a minute at the black shadows on the borders that surrounded the central glowing screen.

 Considering this disturbing image of a strong, alien looking arm, Wesley slid the VHS cassette, ‘It lives in the static’  into the boxy silver VHS video player that had a dusty black Sony DVD & Bluray players stacked on top, like an archaeological sediment layer of three different eras of film technology.

 Wesley pressed the button with a green triangle pointing right that indicated ‘Play’ and the video whirred into life.

 The copyright image at the start popped out from nowhere and it stated that this video was produced in 1986.

‘Vortex Entertainment’ presents, ‘It lives in the Static’, Wesley echoed the introduction title card, speaking in his best ghoulish, monster voice.

Erik ignored Wesley’s dorky outburst. Wesley sat down on the old brown leather couch and settled in for the movie.

‘The video was boring as fuck’, Wesley thought after fifteen minutes.  Erik sat on the floor, central on the faded maroon coloured and intricate patterned rug.

Erik was up near the TV screen, his head  level with the top of the heavy, dark polish wooden TV unit underneath, staring up like an ancient worshipper towards a giant stone idol.

Erik was enthralled, not moving, and not sleepy like Jane had sort of indicated.

Wesley already hated Bruce, the only protagonist in the film so far. Bruce did everything so slowly, he so slowly walked through his morning routine.  How friggin’ mundane. Where’s the carnage? The murders? Even The Shining had a quicker plotline! As Monty Python would yell:

‘ Get on with it!’

 ‘Are you enjoying the movie Erik?’ Wesley asked, trying his best to sound sincere and interested.  

Erik, of course, didn’t reply as he was nonverbal, and he didn’t even nod to indicate he had heard Wesley. Erik just ignored his new support worker. Wesley felt pretty silly for asking this question but then forgave himself because it was just a natural habit to ask and involves others concerning every type of entertainment.

 Wesley noted though that it was now twenty-four minutes in as the glowing green on black LCD indicated in the VHS player.

 

0:24:03

 

   ‘Well that's interesting. I’ve been told that Erik falls asleep around this stage. Maybe he’s excited...or snuck some Pepsi while I was in the toilet’, Wesley thought.

 The boy with autism, pale as a ghost, sat cross legged with his little back to Wesley.

Then it happened...

Erik ever so slowly turned his head, it twisted in an unnatural angle.

Erik whispered, his voice sounding like distant thunder and negative ions :‘Yyyes Wwesley Iii llove that iiit llives in the Ssssstatic.’

 Wesley's eyes widened, his heart skipped a beat and he thought he'd slipped into a nightmare world.

The film character, Bruce, had disappeared and in his place, Wesley saw in the video, walking towards the middle of the film, a tall, slouched figure dressed in a dark blue Tshirt, stone washed jeans and New Balance sandshoes, right there in 1986 grain and subtle flickers. Somehow, some fucking way, some guy looking exactly like Wesley was IN the film!

The doppelganger of himself?

Bright electric flashes of light behind Wesley’s eyes and a spasm shot up through his spine, resonating outwards through his entire nervous system. He felt electric, riding a lightning storm.

Wesley’s head hurt, the throbbing was inside his skull, a high pitched metallic whine rang in his ears. Migraine?

Wesley closed his eyes tight.

.

 

 Erik stared for quite some time, his neck still painfully contorted like a doll tortured by a cruel toddler. Erik blinked and stared at the space in the lounge room, on the leather couch where Wesley had just sat, moments before.

 The lounge was empty.

Wesley was no longer in this Realm.

On the Television screen, Bruce was back, shambling towards his job at the Radio Station, Wesley now walking soulessly behind Bruce and fifteen other living dead ones, captured souls, former disability workers, others, who also tragically, naively watched this same video and the parasitic vortex eye behind it, hiding in plain sight.

 Erik smiled and then laughed a sinister chuckle. He whispered to the empty room and outside, giving thanks towards the being that lived beyond this Cosmos-

 ‘Queskarrularrun zazuul xerassh. Another I offer to you XenoDeus! Flesh and blood to the Unknown God, the God that Shall be Known, meat for the beast,’ Erik screamed an anguished roar.

‘It is fffinished!’ he said in a deflated breath.

Erik’s eyes rolled back, zombie white with chaos, choking phlegm sounds from his constricting throat.

Erik then fell back, a horrific seizure of convulsions, agonic breathing and deep moans of pain, jerking around like a wooden, uncanny puppet.

 Pinocchio from hell, pulled since birth, by hidden strings.

Erik died without a human witness. The Entity, also known as Xenodeus, saw this event.

It dwelled way beyond the first otherworld of Abaddon, the Mirror Realm.

Much deeper beyond.

Further inside, deep in the core of Ninth Circle.

Jane and Paul, Acolytes of Xenodeus and also carriers of the Worm, had cruelly offered their healthy baby son, Erik, up as a child sacrifice. They inserted the Worm into their newborn’s throat eight years ago, and when it activated after three years of dormant slumber, Erik lost all executive function of his body. His parents then started serving hired workers to the Entity, trapping them via the video inside the Mirror Realm, the Reflective Prison.

 A beautiful terror, one of the method’s of capture, was through the vortex formed by human prey viewing the VHS video.

.

 

Way beyond the static, The Entity saw the meat puppet, Erik, die and Xenodeus was indifferent, just like the rest of the material Universe, to this event.

Within the silence of death, a red coloured brain worm, Erik’s Voice, like a gigantic maggot, exited bloodily out through Erik’s corpse mouth.

 The worm itself, unable to enter back to its hellish home through the reflection of water, struggled in pain, sliding in circles of anguish.  There was no water close enough, no swimming pools, no puddles near to enter back into the Mirror Realm and back to Father. It dried out, convulsed and expired next to its host within the hour.

The sanguine coated slug was the one that had completed Erik’ parents mission and it was rewarded with this ignominious end.  

No witness now except for the disembodied voices, a dark choir, a multitude of contempt and hunger, of inhuman creatures and unheard by any living soul, like echoes through a deep, dark tunnel, outside space and time:

 ‘Dead inside. Dddead inside. Ddddead inside. Ssomedayyy they all will liiive dead inside the Static, deeep inside the belly of Abaddonnnn, and further down, with the Father of Nihil ’

END